What’s the difference between JS and BY polygamy?

[Anonymous]

I’ve toured Church historical sites in Palmyra, Kirtland and Nauvoo where the guides talked extensively about Joseph Smith. No mention was ever made of his having more wives than Emma. Admittedly, this was before the JS polygamy essay was released, so I don’t know if that’s changed.

I’ve also toured historical sites in SLC where they would say “oh here is where Brigham Young lived with X number of his wives.” It’s really never been a secret that BY had lots and lots and lots of wives and it didn’t take an anonymous essay on the church website to confirm this.

Further complicating the matter is the fact that it’s also openly acknowledged that BY had children with many of his wives, so it’s assumed that he was sexually involved with some, if not all of them. Joseph Smith? I got the impression from the essay that the Church wants to sidestep the question altogether.

If polygamy was commanded by God (angel with a flaming sword and all that), why is it more acceptable that BY practiced it than JS? If polygamy was commanded to raise up seed, why is it more commonly accepted that BY was sleeping with his wives than JS? Considering that BY and JS were good friends and back-to-back prophets, I think it’s interesting the way we approach their history so differently.

[Anonymous]

I think it all hinges on Emma. She never supported polygamy. She gave in every once in a while, but all her life, even after he died, she stood behind the idea that he wasn’t a polygamist. Joseph’s wives rarely lived with them, Emma didn’t even know for sure who all of them were. Brigham’s home was busting at the seams. I think that is why Joseph’s polygamy becomes such a shock.

[Anonymous]

I agree, and those are good questions. I think the difference is that Joseph F. Smith was trying to keep his family’s dirty laundry out of sight (hence the whitewashing and covering up of history to begin with). That still doesn’t answer why it is acceptable that we talk about BY and not JS in regard to polygamy. Joseph F. clearly was not opposed to polygamy, at least outwardly, because he had several wives himself.

[Anonymous]

mom3 wrote:

I think it all hinges on Emma. She never supported polygamy. She gave in every once in a while, but all her life, even after he died, she stood behind the idea that he wasn’t a polygamist. Joseph’s wives rarely lived with them, Emma didn’t even know for sure who all of them were. Brigham’s home was busting at the seams. I think that is why Joseph’s polygamy becomes such a shock.

Did Mary Ann Angell have anything to say when BY started bringing home plural wives? Maybe it was different because he was already a widower when they got married. I don’t know.

I think some of it has to be due to the fact that it’s simply harder to hide BY’s polygamy. The 1870s were very different from the 1840s. There are tons of photographs of Brigham Young with his wives; none of Joseph Smith with his.

[Anonymous]

I think it was all different Joni. I don’t believe Joseph’s polygamy is comparable to anyone else’s. From Brigham forward you can compare, but not before. Joseph’s entire history of polygamy is grainy. When was Fanny Alger? What were the real details? When did the revelation come? And how anchored was Joseph in Emma. Brigham’s anchor was himself. Joseph and Emma were a team. Emma was the first wife, she did not embrace polygamy, she was bold, strong willed, and verbal. Whether she was right or wrong, she didn’t let Joseph practice anywhere near what other’s did. There were no photographs because – there were no photographs. I believe, that even if photo’s were more available as in Brigham’s time, I don’t think there would be photo’s of Joseph and his other wives. The polygamy’s were different, whether they were intended to be or not.

I also agree that Joseph F. Smith influenced a lot of the Nauvoo Joseph history. I think in his heart, he thought he was doing right, sadly it caused more pain and damage than if he had just left it alone and let it play out.

[Anonymous]

I agree, Mom, Joseph’s polygamy was much more secret and opposed while Brigham’s was much more open and even lauded. It isn’t fair of me to lay it all at the feet of Joseph F., though. He was a practitioner of polygamy and while he probably knew something of Joseph’s polygamy because he was told later in life, he may not have known of it as a boy when he knew his uncle. Joseph Fielding Smith probably had a bigger hand in locking the vaults and whitewashing his family history (Bushman makes reference to this idea in RSR) while serving as church historian. I’m not sure what the younger Smith’s take was on polygamy, he did not practice it but grew up in a polygamist home.

[Anonymous]

DJ Wrote –

Quote:

He was a practitioner of polygamy and while he probably knew something of Joseph’s polygamy because he was told later in life, he may not have known of it as a boy when he knew his uncle. Joseph Fielding Smith probably had a bigger hand in locking the vaults and whitewashing his family history (Bushman makes reference to this idea in RSR) while serving as church historian. I’m not sure what the younger Smith’s take was on polygamy, he did not practice it but grew up in a polygamist home.

True – I always get F and Fielding mixed up, and I need to not add dirt to the mud that already exists.

[Anonymous]

Joni, it’s a very interesting question you raise. I always think of JS’s polygamy as experimental and BY’s as institutionalized. Further, I think of JS’s polygamy as connecting families in the same way that royal families have always been connected by marriage, and BY’s polygamy as something much more plain: large family. In a way, that mirrors the difference between the flamboyant JS and the pragmatic BY.

I think the Church has inadvertently positioned itself as hiding the truth about JS and polygamy. I say ‘inadvertently’ because I think the Church became quiet in an attempt to shift the dialog to what it saw as far more important narrative, but fully aware that everyone knew Mormons had been polygamists (including JS). I grew up in a time when if you said you were a Mormon the first response was, “How many wives do you have? Hahaha.” Boy, that joke just never gets old, huh? The next question was about drinking.

I always feel a little cautious saying that I knew JS was a polygamist because lots of people yell back, “no you didn’t”, but the truth is, I knew about the angel and the sword and section 132. What I didn’t know was the scale. Had you quizzed me as a youngster in my 20’s I’d probably have said he was married to 3 or 4 other women, not 30 or 40.

In defense of the Church, I don’t think that was ever the intent of the Church to squelch the fact, but rather the noise… but it’s hard to argue that the result has been a ‘hiding’ of that information. Here’s what I wrote in another thread in August:

On Own Now wrote:

Another interesting case is that it was widely known and public in the late 19th century, that JS had multiple wives. Somewhere along the way, we lost the detail about it. I don’t actually see this as a conspiratorial cover-up. It’s pretty straight-forward to me. In the 19th century, trying to justify polygamy and at the same time combat the RLDS movement’s assertion that BY, not JS, started the practice, the Church was all too eager to declare that JS had been a polygamist, and to point to the people still in the Church who had been sealed to him. Yet in the post-manifesto world, it no longer had relevance. The Church was trying to put that behind them. Not out of hiding history, IMO, but out of focusing on the important parts of the narrative; it was no longer necessary to preach JS as polygamist, so they no longer did. The reason I don’t think it was a concerted effort to hide the truth is that at that time of transition, every person in the Church knew that JS had been a polygamist and every person in the world knew that Mormons had been polygamists. There could have been no way in that era to ‘hide’ those facts. They simply stopped talking about it, and eventually, the not talking about it came to be interpreted as hiding it. Yet, I knew that JS had multiple wives. I didn’t know the extent of it and I think it is fair to say that the leaders of the Church in the 20th century didn’t either, until research was able to stitch the list together.

[Anonymous]

This is just about how it worked in my own mind, not what a historian or dissertation-writer would say. (Because that person will find lots of differences.)

I also thought that JS’ had 3-4 wives, tops, and that they were mostly “spiritual” and chaste relationships. :crazy: JS’ polygamy was hidden (in my lifetime) and mysterious. It allowed me to think that it was qualitatively different from (just the few) sad stories I heard about Utah wives. But now my opinion is that for the women the differences between JS’ and BY’s polygamy are more of a “house-keeping” variety and the similarities are more significant. Both JS and BY – and maybe many men of their time, I don’t know – were willing to trade women around, and injure them emotionally, trumping their will with “God’s will.” Yes, if someone flatly refused, she wasn’t dragged off by the hair, but I think it’s fair to call the behavior of both men coercive.

So, that’s been the hardest thing for me, coming to the opinion that there isn’t a difference at the ethical core.

I think hiddenness, mystery, lack of records, photos, offspring, etc., made it easy for people like me to create a scenario that the recently-available historical record (thanks mostly to internet), and books like “In Sacred Loneliness” don’t bear out.

I don’t know, but I get the feeling that the church is still testing the waters to decide how to portray polygamy going forward. Or at least I hope they are.

[Anonymous]

I have not studied much about polygamy under BY. I like the general outline of what OON said “JS’s polygamy as experimental and BY’s as institutionalized.” I have some thoughts in the direction of expanding this definition. For women of the time being chaste or married was a big deal. I am not sure that I have the proper vocabulary to describe this but I mean it in the sense of social standing and acceptability.

In the era of BY being a wife to the prophet could hold a certain appeal in the sense of social standing and being supported financially.

Because of the experimental and secretive nature of polygamy under JS, I believe that women who entered into this form of marriage were left twisting in the wind as far as their social and economic status. I remember the words used by Emily Dow Partridge, one of the sister’s that JS had married and then released after Emma’s insistence. She recalled, “my sister and I were cast off.”

[Anonymous]

Joni wrote:

I’ve toured Church historical sites in Palmyra, Kirtland and Nauvoo where the guides talked extensively about Joseph Smith. No mention was ever made of his having more wives than Emma. Admittedly, this was before the JS polygamy essay was released, so I don’t know if that’s changed…I’ve also toured historical sites in SLC where they would say “oh here is where Brigham Young lived with X number of his wives.” It’s really never been a secret that BY had lots and lots and lots of wives and it didn’t take an anonymous essay on the church website to confirm this…Further complicating the matter is the fact that it’s also openly acknowledged that BY had children with many of his wives, so it’s assumed that he was sexually involved with some, if not all of them. Joseph Smith? I got the impression from the essay that the Church wants to sidestep the question altogether…If polygamy was commanded by God (angel with a flaming sword and all that), why is it more acceptable that BY practiced it than JS? If polygamy was commanded to raise up seed, why is it more commonly accepted that BY was sleeping with his wives than JS? Considering that BY and JS were good friends and back-to-back prophets, I think it’s interesting the way we approach their history so differently.

I think the reason the Church doesn’t talk about polygamy in many of the official publications, talks, etc. about JS is because they fear Church members/investigators can’t handle the truth without losing or never gaining a testimony of the restoration (“milk before meat”). Basically some of the details of JS marrying women that were still married to other men, step-daughters, young teenagers, etc. while publicly denying it and hiding many of these marriages from Emma really sound scandalous and don’t exactly help Joseph’s credibility for the average person. I’m not sure they talk about Brigham Young’s polygamy all that much either but they almost can’t avoid it completely because it is already common knowledge and I think it’s easier to make excuses for polygamy in general than some of Joseph Smith’s specific documented actions because there was a Biblical precedent of Abraham and others having multiple wives/concubines, they can claim it was mostly to have large righteous families so women wouldn’t have to be alone or marry “unworthy” men, etc. but I can’t think of any halfway decent faith-promoting explanation for many of the details surrounding JS’s plural marriages and I have yet to hear one that really helps me have much trust in JS overall.

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